


sun spilling, ink-like

by GStK



Series: starsewn & cosmic memory [2]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: red wink and darkened land.
Relationships: Belial/Lucilius (Granblue Fantasy)
Series: starsewn & cosmic memory [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751008
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	sun spilling, ink-like

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlumTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/gifts).



A shadow cannot breathe. A shadow cannot speak.

But it is the shadow of the man across the room that Belial angles to touch, his large, sweeping gestures brushing against the stretched blackness that arcs towards him. His own shadow tries to bridge the gap however it can. The man across the room, yes, the man across the room... every time Belial's shadow fingers touch a sternum, a shoulder, even the sweeping angle of hips, his breath catches a little in his throat.

"Sirius," Belial says again, tasting the name on his tongue. "Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. No. It's not right at all."

Cilius, looking across tables and piles of books at him, makes that great journey of light and refraction just to scowl at him.

"Do you know how I found you?" Belial asks, persisting, persistent. Cilius has got to open his mouth sometime. That's the nature of their game. Every lifetime where they clash and exist together, it's a matter of finding the plug on Cilius' grenade. Let him explode in a fire and storm of words. It's the best part of any reunion.

Yet, Cilius still does not say a single word.

Unconcerned, Belial carries on. "I got your name and your number through Sandalphon. You know him, right? Sandalphon?" The scowl that once seeped over his skin has settled, now, back down into a book of theoretical physics. Always the same, no matter what: Cilius could not give a shit about the little spare. "He was in your graduating class from high school. He told me you were a bit prissy, but hey. All virgins are. And I can certainly fix that for you..."

Cilius' brows come together in a suggestion of discomfort-- no, no. Not discomfort. Annoyance. Irritation. Belial tries for a pause, but those lovely lips don't open to him. Just like the plight of Heracles, his task is not yet through.

"So you went to university, and now you're a graduate student studying alternate dimensions and the difference between dark matter, void matter, and chaos. Congratulations."

Belial strides forward, thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his trousers. He's all smiles and heavy, overbearing confidence. His shadow, the murky thing, begins to overwhelm the shadow of the man before him. When he steps in front of the light source, a single lamp seated at the centre of the room, his shadow is the king of this empty space. The angry thump of a slamming book is his only reward. He's trying his absolute hardest.

Well, not really. He can always go harder. And when he stops before Cilius and his table, the documents he's beginning to shove irately into a beige messenger bag, he supposes he should.

"Sirius is not your name."

Cilius doesn't look up.

"I know your real name."

Not even the blink of an eye.

"And I know exactly why you're here, and what you've been longing for."

A pause. It's the faintest thing, and you would never notice it if you weren't begging at Cilius' heels just as Belial likes to spend his time. Belial celebrates the tiny victory in his head, and he leans forward. Cilius does not cant his head to look up at him, because doing so would make their lips brush. That's how close he gets. That's how much he wants to consume.

"Why don't we take a walk and I'll tell you what you've been missing?"

It's a parody of the same words he used on Sandalphon. This time, there are no cold truths or thorns buried in the words. Every syllable is comforting, suggestive, and if you dive deep enough... desperate.

 _Please come with me_.

Cilius agrees with the snapping closed of his bag. He manages to make even the smallest of sounds sharp. He raises his head, and Belial stops leaning over, and there is a silent breath shared among them.

It is so quiet.

When Belial turns on his heel, it feels so strange, to be the one who leads and not the one who follows. He knows, without even a glance, that Cilius trails right behind.

* * *

The city offers a beautiful view. The top of the university, however, is a drab thing. The roof is just this square, concrete space that they never put any planning into.

"They could have a rooftop garden here. What do you think?" suggests Belial.

That infuriating quiet.

Cilius has stepped towards the ledge. He minds the gap with the edge of his foot. Belial's heart jumps and seizes at the sight, and then it settles, euphoria filling the place of oxygen in his veins.

Framed by the lights of the island city, Cilius looks beautiful.

"You've been more beautiful than this," Belial says. Cilius turns his head to look at him. With those pupils of white aimed at him, what is he supposed to do? He wants to open himself up on a knife and spill his guts for his creator. It doesn't matter how many times they do this song and dance. His feelings will never change.

Cilius waits for him to continue. When he does not, the man scrunches up his face and makes a deliberate, _get-on-with-it_ kind of motion.

"I've been waiting for you."

The scrunched expression eases out, like the flattening of a rug. Instead, one eyebrow raises. God.

"In fact, I've been waiting fifty-and-some-odd years for you. Can you believe it?" He steps forward and laughs into the brittle blackness surrounding them. Where did the sun go? He's been trying to get Cilius to speak to him for hours. "Every lifetime, I wait for you. I go searching for you. And here you are. You've been here for twenty-five years already and you were right under my nose. Ain’t that just the pits, Cilius?"

A twitch of that raised brow. Good, good. Up here in the darkness, they have no shadows to swallow each other. Dark halos will have to do. Gravitational lensing. Belial pushes, and pushes, and then he is being warped all around Cilius' darkness. He can take any shape you want, baby. Just keep pushing.

"Sirius might be the name you were born with this time. But it's not your real name. And it just breaks my heart to know that you don't remember a thing." A beat. "You really don't remember, right?" Belial leans forward, peering at Cilius' beautiful, moon-shaded face. "You look like you're talking to an alien. Or a bug. I don't think I rank high up on the list for you."

... still. Still, not a word. By now, he'd at least have received a knock to the shin. Emboldened by his anger, Cilius should have tried tossing him off the side of the building. But he hasn't done anything so much as breathe.

Just keep pushing.

"You're a creator in the wrong body,"--anger flushes Cilius' face red at the accusation--"Because what you're meant to be is a powerful force that tries to destroy the world. Does that ring a bell? Astrals? Crimson Horizon?" All those words are parlance nowadays. They don't create a spark anywhere behind Cilius' fallen-snow lashes.

Finally, when there can be no more space between them, only a couple steps, Belial draws himself straight up and sighs.

"You and I, we had big plans for this world. We were going to blow their minds, slip into their beds and destroy everything they knew and loved. Then the Speaker had to get in the way. And now, you're scattered all over the place. I don't know how to find you. But I've been looking for you for so long."

He looks at Cilius, cold now, the anger-flush dissipated in the blink of an eye.

"I'm in love with you," he announces to a face of the dead.

Silence. That damnable thing.

"I'm a primal beast that you created. A primarch. I'm a thing of cunning that you put together with your own two hands. I obeyed your every order and tried to help you end the world."

What's he trying to do? Prove his loyalty to a man who disbelieves in the power of words?

"Every time you die, I wait for you to come back. And I'm not immortal or anything!" He puts up his hands. Cilius is still studying him in that blank way. "But I remember everything, no matter where the creator chooses to put me in this dumb world. I keep some of my powers." Sometimes. "And as an angel, I never forget. So... Cilius. What do you say?"

Cilius-- raises a hand to his own lips.

"Want to end the world with me? One more time."

Cilius, Cilius, Cilius.

Cilius approaches him. It's too grand a word to use when there is little but inches between them. Regardless, Belial's heart begins to ricochet in his chest. Cilius comes so close that they are pressed together. He bends his head, nuzzling his cheek into the fall of Cilius' hair. It just comes natural. He can't help himself.

Then, fire.

Belial laughs in exalted expectation. He draws back, and Cilius lets him go. The knife in his kidney sends shocks through his body. Blood drips down from the wound, not enough to lick up. It sure is Cilius, isn't it? That's precisely the sort of answer he would give.

"Ahhhh. I love you more than the stars themselves," he extols, gripping the handle of the knife. Cilius narrows his eyes and watches him pull it out with little more than a grunt.

Belial can't help but grow hot when Cilius looks at him for so long. As the wound begins to retract and heal itself closed-- well. Cilius doesn't look away for a second. He shudders under the attention.

Yet, Cilius still won't say a word.

"Do I have to earn your voice? Is that what this is? I'll do anything you tell me. So let's be conspirators," bargains Belial. He hands the knife back, and his skin is electric when their fingertips brush in the exchange. Cilius steps aside, so Belial comes to join him at the edge, peering down. "Give me anything. An order. An insult. Just let me hear your voice."

Cilius pushes him off the edge of the roof.

As he plummets, he turns to face the sky. Cilius is little more than a shadowed figure. But he is looking, he is leaning over the edge, waiting to see the unfortunate fate that should befall this insane man.

Just for the show of it, Belial waits the very last second before he unfurls his wings. His back brushes the ground just as he sustains himself in flight. His return to the skies is grand, exaggerated, and he can hear Cilius' voice in his head, whispering, Pointless.

He rejoins Cilius, but he does not step back onto the roof. He suspends himself in the air with his wings. He shuts his eyes when Cilius reaches out to touch one of them. He feels the leathery skin and sends further electricity down Belial's spine.

"They're as real as they look, baby," he purrs. "And that's not all I'm packing."

Cilius huffs into the darkness.

Two shadows to swallow each other whole. Cilius offers him a hand. Belial takes it, and he steps onto the university's roof again. His wings disappear into nothingness. The look of consternation on Cilius' face is so adorable. He wants to kiss it.

But there's still no answer.

"Do you remember after all?" he chances, their eyes grazing together like two knives whose tangs should never touch. "I swear, darling, last time was just a fluke."

Last time, he'd had Cilius in his bed for years. Last time, he'd failed to take a bullet for the man. Now, fate says, here's your millionth chance. Have fun.

Cilius makes an odd gesture with his hands, his face blank. Belial tilts his head to study it. Cilius repeats himself, and though Belial can't understand what he means--

"Are you inviting me back to your bed? Cil, you move so..."

\-- and then he understands.

Cilius understands that he understands. He clears his throat, touches his neck with two fingers. A ring of thorns of forgotten roses, a ring of scars decorate the place where a head would be seared clean in two.

This time, the scars have different consequences.

Belial pockets his hands. Cilius, after a thoughtful silence, turns his back and goes to head down the stairs. Belial could just as easily carry the two of them on his wings, but Cilius doesn't trust him.

He does, however, trust him to follow. And follow Belial does.

He sings some mournful tune into the night. The low treble is his shadow embracing the whole of Cilius-- Cilius, who does not turn around to confirm his presence.

Fate rallies against him, always.

* * *

Reiche Island has certainly stepped up since he was last here. The smog's only a problem for some people, sometimes. Lung cancer carries down through the generations. But they have educated men and women, kinship with the other islands, lacking the strict and oligarchical touch Belial came to know in the past. They have universities. They have scholars.

They have amenities for men like Cilius. Belial follows Cilius around all day, a cleverly-explained shadow of an apprentice. The woman who joins them, however, actually has reason to be there.

When teachers call on Cilius in his classes, the woman takes the movements of his hands and translates them into open words. Her voice is soft, belied by the curt way she holds herself, superior over all others. She is clever; when Cilius cannot be bothered to answer, she will explain the solution in his stead, not from his notes but from the equations in her own brain. Her fair hair and dark complexion are a stark contrast to Cilius' ghosts.

One day, probably a week or two after Belial has begun his roundabout stalking, Shalem rounds on him. Cilius proceeds ahead to the physics laboratory without them. He does not need them.

"What are you doing?" Shalem asks. It's not a demand, despite its curtness.

Belial shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're no apprentice," she says. "I checked your records. You never even graduated with a degree, much less in physics."

She's very clever, and in her own way, she's protective of Cilius. She can't seem to see that they belong together.

All these Speakers... aren't they just the worst?

Belial offers her a placating grin. "No, I'm not," he admits. It doesn't drag the tension out of her shoulders, though. "But my whole life revolves around that man you keep following."

"Sirius." Shalem doesn't bat her eyelashes. "He's earned several titles and distinctions for his research into the theoretical third dimension."

Yeah. He knows where that is. "But he's been in this program for far longer than he should've." Cilius is younger than most of his peers, but if he truly applied himself, he would've graduated long ago.

Shalem hesitates, and then she nods. "Explain why you're here."

"Let's just say I'm here to help him graduate."

"You have no degree. You have nothing to show for yourself."

"Consider me his emotional support. His therapy buddy," laughs Belial. Then he throws a hand out. "Besides. I can keep up in class. I know you've seen it."

Shalem has seen it. She doesn't challenge him on that point. Simply, she repeats, "Explain why you're here."

"I want to be. And I want to be with him. Isn't that enough?"

"No," says Shalem. "It's not."

"Then ask him yourself. If you're not going to believe me, then go straight to the source. He wouldn't tolerate me if I didn't have some use to him."

And that's exactly what Shalem does, once they've caught up to Cilius in the labs. She poses her question with the movement of her hands, using sign language even when she doesn't have to. She keeps her lips sealed in these private times. It's like a show of respect.

Belial wants in.

After a hasty and silent conversation, Shalem presses her lips tightly together, and her eyes pass straight over Belial. Cilius returns to his beakers and measurements.

"What did he say?" Belial prods.

"He said," Shalem replies, "That you've offered your body to him for experimentation, and that he needs you present at all times supposing he is struck by the need for sudden research."

"Then it's like I said!" Belial barks, laying his arm across Cilius' shoulders. Cilius shoves him off and into the neighbouring lab station. "I'm his emotional support buddy. So let me be."

Shalem stares at him, her eyes hard as ever, and then she turns away. Both residents go back to pretending like he doesn't exist.

Belial seats himself on the lab station behind him, and he watches, carefully, every single movement of their hands.

* * *

That first kiss. That first time shadows intersect by their lips, not simply by overwhelming one another.

Belial cherishes every such occasion. That’s the great part of forgetting: you can have your firsts all over again!

And that’s the worst part about remembering: it just recalls older times, when everything was more perfect than it is now.

Cilius is at the lab, again, buried in research even as the clock ticks and the lights in the rest of the building start to shut down. Belial sits on the table right next to all his precious work.

“You could do all these calculations in your dorm,” says Belial suggestively, licking his lips for added effect. Cilius does not look up from his handwritten equations. “You could even use an online calculator. It doesn’t have to be longform! We’re in the… wait, what century are we in again?”

He chuckles to himself.

Something stubborn in Cilius resists the call of typewriters, computers, formats that aren’t derived by his own hand. Belial is the one who ends up typing up his thesis drafts and submitting them. It’s the closest he gets to helping, and it’s the most useless he’s ever felt.

“It exists.”

A glance. The observer effect bends around him and turns his double-slit experiment into a single reality. The way into Cilius’ heart is through the hard tongue of science.

“The third dimension you’re looking into. It exists.”

Cilius waves a dismissive hand.

“I’ve been there.”

A second glance. The entangled particles of heart and body take their opposite spins.

“You and I both were there. That place was created just for us, I think. Can you believe it?”

Belial presses his palms to the smooth table. Cilius has long since paused in his writing. The outside of his left palm is smeared with ink, just like always. Belial’s heart is torn open by the kinetic force of nostalgia.

“Do you think the Creator would find you special enough to make a place just for you?” Cilius’ face hardens and he looks away. Undaunted, Belial resumes in a softer voice: “Do you think the Creator would be so very afraid of you that he’d lock you up in your own special prison?”

That’s more like it. Cilius sets pen and paper down, standing from his stool. But where is he going? He is arrested in the up-down-strange-charm possibilities.

Cilius makes a half-hand for prayer, gesturing it upward. _God_. Then he waves his palm towards his chest, affixes a frown on his face, flicking his index finger across the line of his thumb. His palm releases like dashing salt to the ground.

 _I hate God_.

His gestures are half-hearted, made a thousand thousand times to ignorant observers.

His eyes snap up when Belial, in return, makes motions with his hands.

Three fingers up, making a W. Index finger pointing to Cilius. Clasping his hands together, left hand over right. Then, an index finger pointed at his heart.

Cilius gives an audible snort of breath.

“What?” asks Belial, a smile tipping the scales on the side of his face. Cilius smooths his palms over the marble worktop, breaking eye contact, looking down at his theories. They’re almost as beautiful as Cilius. His haphazard scrawl tears apart the fabric of the world, just like the magical genius of a certain girl called Cagliostro, once upon a time. (But Cilius is far greater than she was, can, will ever be.)

“Cilius.”

The man in question looks up at him. He raises a brow, lowers it, sighs into his cupped hands. Belial spreads his legs wider off the edge of the table so Cilius can slide in between them.

He has to scoot forward, lean down so they can be face-to-face. Cilius holds his hands up.

Index and middle finger held out, slightly apart, gesturing at him. Then Cilius lays a peace sign across his forehead.

Belial laughs.

Cilius leans up to kiss him, and he is embraced by Belial’s desperate arms.

_Will you marry me?_

And the reply: _You’re stupid_.

Hours spent poring over books of the modern structure of sign language, hours spent watching Cilius in exchange with Shalem, his fingers fast moving, his expressions dipping in the perfect ways.

Cilius makes a noise of breath and presses a knee onto the marble, giving him leverage to control the kiss.

Yeah. Belial’s the stupid one, alright.

* * *

A thesis defense should be a foregone conclusion. The way Belial understands it, the professors and the students get entwined like growing roses, spending countless hours perfecting an idea, a question worthy for argument. The panel asks softball questions. For all the work sunk in, you’re out with a degree and the title of Doctor in a few hours.

Unless your name is Cilius.

“This is… the second time,” says Anna, the wispy, red-haired professor assigned to Cilius’ thesis. He’s never seen them work together. Not once.

Cilius makes angry gestures with his hands. Even before Shalem can translate, Anna is shrinking back.

“He says,” begins Shalem quietly, “that their questions were invasive and beyond the scope of his current research. That they’re…” She pauses to watch the second lash of Cilius’ fingers. “... expecting him to provide proof of a theoretical model.”

Anna sets her hands on her knees, sighing like a brittle tree gasping for breath. “U-unfortunately, that’s the nature of the Physics program. You have to provide calculations--”

“He’s done so,” interrupts Shalem.

“... not just math. Calculations you’ve gone and applied and have results for.” Anna looks long at Cilius, who meets her gaze like spruttled ice. “Haven’t you reserved the telescope? I think… I think-- we talked about using the _Fickle Nightmare_ , didn’t we?”

Shalem and Cilius both are silent for a long moment. Cilius crosses his arms, shuts his eyes, squeezing the inside of his arm.

“They won’t let him use it,” Shalem explains. Anna glances at her in surprise. “They tell us that there are more important projects. That the telescope wouldn’t be available for low-priority observations until two years out.”

“Then why didn’t you say so!” ejaculates Anna, though her voice shudders and becomes a whisper again, almost at once. “The panel would have understood… I’m sure…”

Shalem says something more, but Cilius walks away. Cilius walks away, and it is only natural that Belial follows. The terse footfalls come faster, and Belial quickens his pace until he can take Cilius by the hand.

Cilius scowls up at him. They need no words to convey the frustration and anger present here. Belial can construct the diatribe Lucilius would have given, had he the vocal cords to voice it.

Cilius drags him up to the roof of the lab building again. Belial reflects, with a distant disappointment, that he has yet to see the inside of Cilius’ room.

But, hey. You give what you get, right?

“Cil,” he says, first, while the man minds the edge of the roof with his boot. When Cilius turns to him, Belial makes the sign he’s created for his nickname: left hand bumping to right, both hands crossing in opposite directions. Cilius rolls his eyes.

 _You took the ‘sill’ out of ‘windowsill.’ Bravo_.

_Hey, I did my best. I was getting tired of fingerspelling it._

Rather, Cilius was getting tired of Belial turning the L into an _I love you_.

With Cilius’ eyes on him, Belial signs very carefully. Right hand above the left, fingers pressed together, closing the vertical distance and brushing each other a couple times. Then, left hand bumping to right, both hands crossing in opposite directions.

 _Windowsill_. _Window, Cil_.

Lucilius watches his hands, playing with the material of his black gloves. He replies, with the same amount of care:

 _A window to where_?

 _Let me take you_ , Belial says, kissing thumb and index finger to his lips, _to the dimension in between_.

 _Impossible_.

Belial unfurls his wings and knocks against the air itself. It replies to him, solid, like glass.

 _You better show me your room after this_!

* * *

“Careful,” calls Belial, sign useless when Lucilius is trudging so far ahead of him. “Distance and time don’t work the same here as they do out there.”

Lucilius offers an impatient shake of his head; he knows already. Well, good for him.

Once, this open, liminal space had been empty. Once, this had been the kingdom of swirling colours, home only to him and his dark-spiked, chaos-driven beauty. The Speaker took pity on him and gave him a mirror through which to speak with the Singularity. It annoyed his beauty to no end, and he has many, many sore shins from countless conversations.

But now? Now.

The air is pink, then yellow, then a pastel orange, comforting colours for everyone but Lucilius. They seem to walk on nothing, but there is a floor beneath them. It’s transparent and it doesn’t truly exist if you think too hard. But now?

Where once was nothing exists everything. Lucilius’ shattered fragments float lazily through the air. Each shard reflects a moment of his many lives. This one shows him buried in conversation with Lucifer, bent over papers with a content smile on his face. That one catches Cilius bloody, on his last legs, scrawling the details of his murderer with the last of his strength.

Those are not the memories Lucilius cups in his hands. At the moment Belial catches up to him, he has a dozen clasped between his palms. Belial strokes his fingers over each one.

\-- _Lucilius and the moment of revelation. You are just a clone. You are faulty. The Speaker bowing his head piteously, saddened and at once destroying everything Lucilius lived for_.

\-- _Lucilius and Lucifer, brothers caught in a war between islands. Lucilius, wielding magic with Lucifer sheltered behind him. The two of them pierced through by a single spear._

\-- _Lucilius in a more recent time, turning himself from side to side, looking in the mirror. His skirt falls long; his hair falls short. His lips, thinned in frustration at something that’s not_ right.

\-- _Lucilius, and he is a schoolgirl, but he cannot be schooled and he is not a girl. His hand, closed in Belial’s. Belial, with her smile and her blowback hair and her confident grin, ushering Lucilius onto the airship and forward to new adventures._

\-- _Lucilius now, but smaller, with a deep voice that scrapes out Belial’s soul and smashes it. Lucilius now, but years ago, struggling against the Speaker-no-Lucio holding him down, smiling desperately, holding a scalpel in hand, promising that this is what the Creator wanted_.

Lucilius, now, with the ring of scars around his neck. He studies the world each crystal contains. Their lifetimes are spread out here-- everything Lucilius doesn’t remember, and even some of the things they do.

He touches Lucilius on the shoulder. His fingers are not shrugged off. Now is the time for a voice.

“You could,” says Belial, “take those with you.”

Cilius turns his head.

“Swallow them. They’ll become a part of you. Next lifetime, you might shatter again, but for this one, you would remember. You’d remember everything you’ve been through.” _Everything I’ve done for you_ , he doesn’t say, because he’s never had to say it and he never will.

Lucilius returns his gaze to the fragments, pensive in his quiet, considering.

Belial gives a short laugh. “The Speaker? He wouldn’t be happy at all. He might just chuck us in jail again. But it might be worth it, to take back what belongs to you. What do you say?”

He could have his Lucilius back. Here’s the choice. The double-slit experiment with its waves, yet to collapse. Here’s the chance. The Cilius here isn’t his. The Cilius that belongs to him is in those fragments. He spent a thousand years putting them back together, but they always scatter. The Speaker won’t let him be whole for very long.

But just for a moment, he lets that high sink in. Hope against hope. He is elysian in the possibilities. Just a moment.

Lucilius mouths the word.

 _No_.

He spreads his hands and the pieces of himself go floating back in the air. Someday, this Lucilius will become part of the air in the rift, too.

He takes Lucilius’ hand, clutching it, turning his chin towards him.

Lucilius stares at him, challenging him to say he was wrong.

Belial, with a furling of his wings, brings their lips together in the chastest kiss they’ve ever shared.

“You could deny me everything, and I would still love you,” he promises into the solid air.

Now, Lucilius shakes his head, a small smile hinting his amusement.

The path the light takes dictates that he is the one to kiss Belial in this universe, instead.

* * *

“So I traded Lucifer’s number for your details,” he finds himself saying, spreading out wide on the white sheets of the bed. Lucilius is at the door of the bedroom, and in a blink, he is sitting on the bed, offering Belial a mug of tea. He’s wearing Belial’s white shirt, blending in with the walls, the carpet. “How do you not spill anything here?”

Lucilius shrugs. He’s not a messy person.

“You do work-study?” asks Belial, peering around the wide room. He’s still trying to figure out how a grad student of twenty-eight can afford a three-room apartment on campus.

In answer, Lucilius fingerspells with one hand, sipping tea with the other. _PROSPERITY._

Belial hesitates. “The shrine?” After Lucilius nods, he blows out a whistle. “Life comes at you fast.”

His little doctor-to-be explains in sharpened movements of his hands that it’s not what it sounds like. Unlike the rest of Rhem, he doesn’t indulge in the religion or ancestor worship.

“If I ever met a version of you that did,” murmurs Belial, “I would swear you got possessed by the Speaker.”

The quiet beckons. It’s heated by the irate stare with which Lucilius meets him. Belial laughs, patting the space next to him. After careful thought, Cilius scoots over.

It lets Belial touch the skin of his thigh, spell words into his skin without the need for voice. His millenia have focused so much on the timbre of his voice and what it can do to people. In this life, he is a boy who became a sex worker for the money. Now, he’s a pretend assistant to one of the most dangerous, intelligent men in the skydom, trying to prove the existence of a dimension he inhabited for years and years.

And then one day, it just absorbed them, and they were brought back. Scattered.

 _Will you change your thesis_?

Lucilius scoffs at him. _You gave me clear proof I was right. Not that I needed it. Why would I ever change it_?

 _To find something more interesting_.

A sigh. _You are more than enough trouble._

Belial’s heart flutters. Coughing, he asks, “What ever happened to the Speaker?” At Cilius’ glance: “Your brother…? Lucio. Ben.” He waves his mug dismissively. “I’m never sure what he goes by.”

 _Ben_.

Lucilius spells each letter out with a clear sense of hatred. Belial sips loudly from his tea.

 _He was my brother. And then he was not_.

Vague, wrapped in thorns and layered beneath nightshade. Just like Cilius. Belial fills in the gaps from what he understands himself: the Speaker, flitting in and out of existence, placing himself in and across history. If space is a drum then he is the baton that beats its rhythm. If time is a flute, he plays it with conceited breaths.

 _After he hurt you_ , Belial signs, Lucilius’ eyes on him the entire time, _he disappeared_.

He gets a nod.

 _Why do you think he did it,_ he asks, which is a very simple question, and when Lucilius sends him a gaze as bitter as the last drip of coffee, he wonders if he’s messed up the motion of his hands. He’s had a few accidents in bed before; nothing to worry about. “Do you think he hated you?”

Lucilius lapses into silence, looking somewhere far away. It’s different from the quiet of just being around him -- his mind is always buzzing, and you can feel his tense energy. Now all of it vanishes, sent careening around the black hole of Lucilius’ heart.

What, in all of space, is capable of conquering the black hole?

Time, in the form of a hand he places in Cilius’. Time, or a hand, bringing Cilius into him so Belial might kiss the top of his forehead. Time, or a warmth, their two bodies laying together on a white bed in a white room with white walls and no windows.

With an arm wrapped around him, Lucilius looks smaller but no less capable. He makes the motion of fingers held straight up, at his chest, then points it towards the air. Belial knows he could add so much more to it, but it’s really quite simple, and Lucilius hates mincing words.

 _God_.

“If I told you,” says Belial, quiet but not soft, “that Ben, Lucio, the Speaker, he does these terrible things over and over and over --”

Lucilius grips his arm, telling him to stop. But Belial shakes his head.

“He tries all these different ways to make the Creator come back down and talk to him. But you know what? He could cut you 500 times, and he could send me to the pits of the Crimson Horizon, and he’d still never hear the Creator speak.”

He’s got a burr-like smile on his face, because for all the lies he weaves, he knows this is the solid truth. Lucilius leaves a second to digest the idea, and then, then he’s asking his question.

 _How would you know_?

… because Cilius never trusts him. He laughs, and he kisses Lucilius deeply, and the affronted, wanting stare he gets is worth it, so very worth it.

“You made me to be the most cunning thing in the sky. And I know better than anyone what it takes to bring somebody back.”

The answer, though it still sits strangely with Lucilius, appears acceptable. He tucks Cilius’ hands between them, kissing each knuckle in mighty reverence.

* * *

At the graduation ceremony, Shalem touches two fingers to his arm.

“I heard,” she says, “That you traded Lucifer’s number to get to Lucilius.”

Those are not the words Belial expects out of her mouth. He adjusts the neck of his tie, pocketing his hands. “Is that what he said? Ah, Cil. Always so curt.”

“Lucifer,” continues Shalem, touching his chin to make sure his eyes are on her. (He’s looking! Really! It’s not his fault that the stage is over _there_ and she’s-- well. She’s a bit short.) “is someone I wish to meet. Give me his number.”

“You too?” grumbles Belial, rolling his shoulders. “Sorry, Shasha, but that’s a high price item. What can you offer me that I would want?” He’s quite content now. His eyes find Lucilius again out of habit. Everyone else is wearing blue. He, of course, is wearing white.

Shalem takes him by the jaw, squeezing his mouth together and drawing his face down. She has cracked eggshell eyes, in the way that they have been broken, but they will always end up in your bowl. Always. “Look at me when I am speaking to you.”

“Shhshh, Oh’m dryin’ to --”

“They’re going in alphabetical order,” she points out, then returns to the matter at hand. “I can tell you how to silence the Speaker.”

Lucio.

She lets go of his jaw but he’s a moment late in shutting it. He fixes the lines of his coat and stands up straight, trying not to quiver in the excitement. 

Lucio bids expansion, light travelling at three hundred thousands metres a second in a desperate crawl all over the universe. He is the natural force that bids people to see, but it’s a side effect of his searching for the cosmic anomaly that has only left microwaves behind.

But Shalem. Shalem, she is dark matter, 54 metres a second and eighty percent of everything you could hope to touch. A Speaker is a Speaker. Belial realises, like the men who observed that the skies do not orbit the islands, that she must fill the gaps Lucio leaves. The light creates jagged edges and scars around your throat. The darkness is the force that binds things back together, letting atoms take new forms and heal around the wounds.

They’re into the Gs, now. Belial shows his reticence to the speaking-breathing shadow that insists on standing in front of him, blocking the view of Lucilius.

“What a lovely thing like you want to do with Lucifer?”

“I’ve met your price,” replies Shalem, snippish. “You have no right to demand my reasons.”

“Whether I answer you or not, you’re going to follow the Speaker around and clean up his messes. What does it matter to me?” Belial says this, but his heart is surely hammering in his chest. _Give Helel the silence he deserves_.

He outwaits Shalem’s patience. She spits her next words in a fluster: “I want to remember. That’s all.”

“Remember,” echoes Belial. “Still not sure what Lucifer has to do with it.” Wouldn’t Beelzebub be a better choice? But who knows what dimension that guy is in now. It’s been a few centuries since Belial last checked in.

Shalem colours, ever-so-slightly, like a maiden. Belial knows he is beholding something very special and very rare. “I have heard he brings solace.” Then the moment is gone, and they’re calling the people whose family names start with H, and the deal is in its last seconds.

Belial clicks a pen, writes the number on the back of his event ticket, passes it over. Shalem studies it quickly and tucks it into her bra.

Now is Lucilius’ time to shine. He’s called to the stage. He scowls under the lights. The man due to hand him his diploma delays, forced to read off a very, very long list of accolades.

“Was graduation mandatory?” asks Belial.

“No,” answers Shalem. “He wanted to rub his accomplishments in everyone’s face.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that…”

Lucilius does have a conceited side to him. His brilliance was too much, once upon a time, for the council of Astrals. Throughout the years, he has continued to block out the rays of the sun with his vibrance, no matter what form he takes. Lucilius, Cilius, Sirius, Cil.

At the centre of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole that whispers opaque words into the swirls of stars. In the skydom there is a boy with a moon in his heart and an unshifting polarity that points him towards the comets.

Lucilius receives his diploma with the veneer of a man whose patience has long since run out. The thing is wrapped up, tied with a blue ribbon, meant to match the costume of all the other students. _It should be red_ , Belial thinks. It should be red.

Shalem receives Lucilius first. She brushes off his robes, fingering the gold stola given to students of science who have revolutionised their fields. He allows her attention, head lazily turning in Belial’s direction.

Belial has never had to search for words. He is never tongue-tied, especially not in the presence of his creator. This shadow of his creator, which can’t decide his colour, is living and breathing, speaking with hands and fingers only. If he invented his own dialect to shed the skeleton of society, Belial would learn it without a breath of hesitation.

So: a raised brow in his direction.

“Once upon a time,” Belial says, “man thought he could part the heavens. So he journeyed to the heart of the Creator’s garden in an airship. He found it empty-- almost empty. That’s not the point here. The point is, man never thought to ask the Creator if he wanted visitors in the first place. Man just wanted to force himself on a celestial body because he could.”

“Your version of the myth is both historically inaccurate and ridiculously lewd,” Shalem tells him. Lucilius echoes the same feeling with his eyes.

Belial laughs. He plays with the ring on his finger. “Okay. Then, how about this: once upon a time, I met a bunch of kids in an airship. They wanted to know why the sky is blue. And I told them that it doesn’t have to be. The science doesn’t matter here. What’s important is the reason why they were asking. And you know,” he finishes, “I don’t think they had a reason. Really.”

“Singularities rarely do,” demurs Shalem.

Lucilius looks between the two of them. A shade of something like understanding passes over his eyes.

 _Why is the sky blue?_ and _Does it have to be?_

 _Where’s the Creator?_ and _Does it matter?_

 _Why does Cil remain fractured?_ and _Does it change your love for him?_

The answer to every question is the same.

Index finger, pinky, thumb out, shifted from side to side.

Lucilius rolls his eyes and echoes the gesture.

Belial takes him in, the sky violet between their lips.


End file.
